displeased Jonah

4:1 displeased Jonah. Although Jonah himself had repented of his disobedience and had preached in Nineveh as God had commanded, he had not yet repented of his attitude toward the Assyrians, preferring their destruction to their conversion! That was why he tried to flee to Tarshish in the first place (Jonah 4:2). He knew from the prophecies of his contemporary, Hosea, that the Assyrians would eventually conquer and deport his people into Assyria (e.g., Hosea 9:3), and he harbored an intense hatred of them as a nation. He was willing to proclaim coming destruction to them, but not salvation.